Blood Child

Reviews / Votes

On Eleanor Rees's previous work:

'Rees's work is completely deserving of its shortlist position, even more so for a voice outside the mainstream.'

Ross Sutherland, Metro On Eleanor Rees's previous work:

'Eleanor Rees comes from 'over the water', and her poems seem to issue from a lyric country where they do things differently. Instinctive, elemental and ready for anything they twist and coil marvellously between inner and outer worlds, never resting for long in either, always beguiling or unsettling the reader ...'

Paul Farley On Eleanor Rees's previous work:

'This is a strongly contemporary voice, but always on the edge of myth, dream, fairy-tale. The title sequence is remarkable: a sustained piece of dramatic-poetic writing, a tour-de-force.'

Michael Symmons Roberts 'There is a sensuality in Rees's poetry; sensations are beautifully and seductively illustrated. There is also a sense of movement in the work; she takes you on a narrative journey paved by her mastery of words.'

Dundee University Review of the Arts 'Rees asserts unarguable truths that stretch beyond the usual socio-historic contexts we like to create in order to locate ourselves as readers.'

Nicky Arscott, Poetry Wales Reviews
'Together, Blood Child and Riverine convey seductively cross-fading time-scapes; it is in the end this quality that makes these remarkable poems linger in the memory, unsettling and disquieting, redefining so-called realities. Dark, visceral, her use of language and image is controlled and concentrated, and through it the message is one of connection. World and human personality are intimately woven together; we are not observers of the game but part of it, belonging to the continuum. It comes down to time, the context through which we move; past and present occupy the same space within Rees's theory of relativity, and chronology for her is measured both in every day and cosmic terms, just as local and universal, yesterday, today and tomorrow brush against one another, with us -rushing but static- in their midst.'
Sean Street, Tears in the Fence 'Eleanor Rees does with language what an origami master does with paper or a contortionist their own limbs: she teases and manipulates it into wondrous, strange, and alluring shapes. It's been several years since I've read work this stimulating, the engagement with which offering such profound peace and pleasure and such resonant rewards.'
Niall Griffiths 'These poems are an exquisite unearthing of meaning in nature. They trace metamorphosis, find mind in everything, and suggest not so much what things look like to humans but what they feel like to themselves.'

Jayne Griffiths 'The messages Rees' poems deliver are difficult to transcribe prosaically, moving as they do in a densely fairy-tale or dream-logical atmosphere. This aspect of her work is hugely effective, creating a lush dreamscape full of mud, sludge, mulch and other fecundities, populated by eerie running children, unreliable parents, poet-birds and their panoramic perspectives. [...] The poems in Blood Child show an astute, painterly eye and a flair for outlandish and surprising detail. [...] Blood Child [is an] engaging, imaginative text that demonstrates a great love and respect for its folkloric sources, and [is] a thought-provoking read.'Dave Coates, The York Review 'This is a short collection of 19 poems but the author and publishers should be applauded for having a collection that does not fit the poem a page routine. [...] In this third collection we can read the substantial creativity of Eleanor Rees and her melding of history, nature and emotion and the skill in developing a 'oneness' from a multitude of ideas. Foremost in her writing is the use of changing forms, transmogrifying, as it were into different species whilst in full flow which offers both continuation and further development of style as well as theme. There is also the touching on the darker recesses of the unconscious mind, not a digging, more a small bore-hole into Pandora's Box.'J. Johnson Smith, poetryparc